An Initial Study On The Western Community Colleges Accreditation System In The USA

Along with the entrance into Massification stage of Higher Education, the rapid expansion of our national Higher Vocational Education leads us to worry about the quality of Higher Vocational Education. And the contradiction between the quantity and quality of higher vocational education increasingly becomes the bottleneck to restrict the development of Higher Vocational Education. So strengthening the evaluation and monitoring on the quality of Higher Vocational Education must be listed in agenda. Since the first implementation of national Higher Vocational Education evaluation, the evaluation has made remarkable achievements. But while we fully confirm the remarkable achievements of evaluation, we must be fully aware of there existing many problems and defects. Drawing lessons from the perfect Western Community Colleges Accreditation System in the USA, we could benefit much from its successful experience, which has a leadership function and guiding function upon our national Higher Vocational Education evaluation.The thesis'main research question is the Western Community Colleges Accreditation System in the USA and the main research object is the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges in the USA . By means of the Documentary Study, the Case Study and the Historical Study, the author analyzes the arising background of the Western Community Colleges Accreditation System in the USA and elaborates detailedly the organization design, the staff composition, management system, accreditation standards , accreditation procedures and their respective characteristics . Then on the basis of these, she summarizes some characteristics of the Western Community Colleges Accreditation System in the USA. In the end, by means of the successful experience of the Western Community Colleges Accreditation System in the USA, the author generalizes and puts forward some useful enlightenments and suggestions about our national Higher Vocational Education evaluation, as followings: the professionalization and diversification of the evaluation body, the characterization and diversity of evaluation standards, our active support for the foundation and development of evaluation intermediary organization, the reinforcement of academic self-assessment during evaluation processes, the publication and differentiation of the evaluation results.